


no place to start a family

by TheoMiller



Series: send all your love down the wire [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers Family, Awesome Sam Wilson, BAMF Melinda May, BAMF Tony Stark, Bickering, Canon-Typical Violence, Comfort/Angst, F/M, Female Tony Stark, Gen, Pregnancy, Sam Wilson Feels, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-09 22:37:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6926494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheoMiller/pseuds/TheoMiller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toni's pregnant, so they all have to be nice to her. (Right?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	no place to start a family

**Author's Note:**

> Rhodey/May is pretty minor but it gets brought up a few times so I tagged it - by gods, I am going to write those two their own fics one of these days because I ship it so hard.
> 
> Also, Sam discusses Riley's death. So. Warning for sads, mentions of homophobia (DADT, etc).

Toni misses the first mission after the news because Steve automatically says "sick, she's sick, she can't come".

Bruce shows up with vitamins and cookbooks and a blood pressure cuff the minute he gets not-green enough to pull on clothing after the mission.

"It's a girl," Natasha says, over breakfast the next morning. "Take your vitamins," she adds, and she's still brandishing the knife she's cutting fruit with, so Toni complies with less grumbling than it might have otherwise taken.

"It'd better not be a girl, I have money on boy," Clint says.

"Easy money," says Natasha.

Thor hovers excitedly around Toni until she finally sighs and tells him he can touch her belly, even though _it's literally just a mass of cells, Thor, it's basically a step up from a polyp at this point_. He immediately presses an ear to her bellybutton and murmurs to it in his native tongue.

"If you're telling my mass of cells a terrifying Asgardian bedtime story, we're gonna have a problem," Toni tells him.

Thor's guilty expression tips the edge on Steve's careful poker face into actual laughter.

Sam watches them all until finally, "You gonna make an honest man out of my boy?" he asks Toni.

"Guys, I haven't even told Rhodey yet," says Toni, exasperatedly.

"Forget Rhodey, Pepper is going to murder you," says Clint, and all the blood drains from Toni's face. "You forgot to tell Pepper," he says, and laughs at Toni as she scrambles for her phone.

"I forget she can't _actually_ read my mind," Toni gripes while it rings.

-

It's not the first time they've argued about this, but it is the first time they've done it in front of the team, in the guise of a team meeting, and despite the audience (the whole team sans Sam, whose dead partner's sister is getting married in fucking _Fresno_ , having refused an offer from Toni to fund a destination wedding in where-the-fuck-ever, NYC).

Toni is still refusing to cede her ground. "Okay, but—"

"Steve's right," says Natasha, and everyone goes quiet.

She sighs like this is the most exhausting thing eve, sets down the orange she's peeling with a very thin, very shiny, very _sharp_ -looking knife (which is overkill, really), and looks at Toni. "I know you don't want to leave the field any more than the rest of us do, but clearly all of these idiots are emotionally invested in your special little polyp, and that means they're going to be watching your back with twice the paranoia. You're twice the liability now."

"Liability," Toni says flatly.

She shrugs. "Twice the object of affection, twice the liability."

There's the very loud sound of no-one mentioning the fact that Natasha has been the most gung-ho about prenatal vitamins, and has been upping security everywhere.

"Look, I don't feel like playing clean-up when all these idiots run around trying to cover you and get themselves pinned down."

Toni folds her arms. "And me disappearing from the field is supposed to have absolutely zero impact on our success rate? No Dr. Doom coming here looking for me because I'm home alone and I wrote a mean note on his thesis?"

"It'll be fine," Steve says, again.

Natasha rolls her eyes, smoothly transitioning into a glare in Steve's direction. "And you're an _idiot_ if you actually think that. The answer is obvious."

"Dread Pirate Roberts gambit?" asks Clint.

"Yep. Iron Woman will fight with the Avengers, Toni will stay home and engineer. Pepper and SI's stock prices will thank me for it, as will the collective blood pressure of the group. I've already texted May."

"I'm not giving Agent Terrifying my suit," Toni snaps. It's slightly less illogical than just whining that she _is_ Iron Woman, they can't split the two.

"May's not in the business of avenging, she's not taking your suit," says Natasha. "I just don't have Colonel Rhodes' number on this phone."

Toni relaxes slightly, because Rhodey and her might've had their differences before, but if there's anyone she trusts with the suit, it's him. Or Pepper. But she wouldn't do that to Pepper. So mostly him. Then, "Wait, why would Agent Terrifying—oh, god."

"Rhodey came and told you!" says Steve, throwing up his hands.

"No, nope, I would definitely remember—"

"It was 3:43pm on December 19th of last year," JARVIS interjects coolly. "Your response was as follows," he adds.

" _Hmm? Oh. Yeah, cool, man, that's great. Pass me that wrench_ ," Toni's voice says.

"I was clearly in engineering mode, why would he tell me when I wa—that SNEAKY BASTARD."

"So, you're giving him the suit, right?" asks Clint.

"It is interesting," Thor says, "that you lose your ability to truly lose yourself in your work so greatly parallels the trance into which Seers pass, when the future is revealed to them."

Toni squints at him. "What I do is science. Don't bring your fucking voodoo shit into this."

"I have heard your abilities described as 'almost supernatural', and also 'downright spooky', although that was Clint," Steve weighs in, unhelpfully.

"This news is seriously freaking me out, not gonna lie," says Toni. "Rhodey's going into the field, he's dating someone whose day job might be even worse than ours, I do not need to worry about becoming Stephen fucking Strange in the meantime." _I'm pregnant, you have to be nice to me_ , is left unsaid, but understood.

Natasha smirks over at her while the others all scramble to make it up to Toni with gifts of food and backrubs. This is a trump card that she must use wisely, before they all figure it out.

-

Agent Coulson appears ten minutes after her team leaves for their first mission with Rhodey as Iron Woman. "This is so far below my pay grade I'm actually considering calling Magneto to come help Doom," he says. "I need to use one of your rooms filled with monitors."

"What am I, a library computer lab?" She asks. Monitors. Please. She's already setting up projection fields. "How many monitors?"

"Nine."

"One for each team member, plus another to patch in local security feed, what's the ninth for? Communication with your other half?"

"Fury is out of the country and has left strict orders that he is on vacation and not to be bothered with our nonsense."

"The boyband was his own damn nonsense. Specs for the last screen?"

"Netflix connection."

Toni rolls her eyes. "And I'm the one who's immature and unable to focus on objectives."

"I'll devote my full attention to this when I actually need to," he says. "In the meantime. I'm an entire season behind on Say Yes to the Dress."

Toni decides to hang around just to see if Doom is even trying, but then Steve and Rhodey are being POLITE to each other every time they issue completely contradictory orders, and no one has the vantage point to tell Sam that -

Toni grabs her phone and dials into the team comms. "Falcon, three units to your left, one and a quarter up, the weak spot is on your 3 o clock."

"Good to hear your voice, Stark," says Sam, as he makes the adjustments. "Concussive grenade or flash?"

Toni runs the scenarios in her head. "Both," she says, and claps her hands together. "All right, Doom. Time to see if your code has gotten any more sophisticated since you were twelve."

"I have an exploding arrow if you can get the green voodoo shit down too," says Clint. "Aw, Hulk, no. Thor, he's heading towards the wharf, herd him north."

"That's not north," sighs Coulson, without looking.

"Uh. Opposite north," Clint amends.

"South southeast, four blocks, there'll be a bank on the corner," Natasha barks, and Toni sees Rhodey grin in the helmet cam.

"What are you thinking, Rhodey?" She asks.

"Baffles," he says.

"Like on a submarine?" Asks Steve.

"Your boy Sam just threw one of these murder bots into my path, Rogers, and their sensors have a blind spot. I'm gonna need your shield."

"No way Doom didn't code that into them, the guy is way too paranoid," says Toni.

"Oh, it's in the code," Rhodey says.

It's easy enough to herd Doom down a narrow side street, and then Steve throws his shield in a perfect zigzag off the walls of the buildings, and Clint fires five arrows at once, several times, and the bots' pattern of rotating their sensors to check their blind spots can't help but pick up at least one projectile and try to shoot it down with lasers - and in the mere seconds of time that the bots are distracted from cover fire for Doom himself, Thor and the Hulk swoop in, and Sam and Rhodey and Natasha secure an ultralight vibranium net with an electromagnetic dampening field over the bots, and then it's over.

Toni pumps a fist into the air and whoops, and then overrides the suit controls to say, "Suck my metaphorical DICK, Doom," aloud.

"That's seriously disturbing," mutters Clint, like he doesn't know his comm is still on.

Doom responds by disappearing. Jesus. He's not even trying, Toni would feel bad for him and his obvious apathy for his current role of supervillain if he weren't. You know. A supervillain. She imagines he'll get his usual, evil brand of bitterly anarchist pep back in his step the next time Richards decides to try and do something truly fucking idiotic and stirs his arch nemesis back up. She gives it less than a week. You can always trust Richards to be prompt, if not necessarily punctual, in his stupidity.

"Go team," says Sam. "I could sleep for a week. Let's get Bruce back and head home."

"A mighty battle, but ultimately pointless."

Steve laughs quietly. "Story of my life."

-

The first time Steve gets hurt in a mission without her, Toni's pacing in the waiting room while SHIELD's triage team decides if he can be released to heal up at home, or if they need to strain everyone's (read: Bruce's) nerves by keeping him overnight. If they're lucky. That's what the nurse had said, but Toni doesn't trust medical professionals or SHIELD, so she isn't going to trust a SHIELD nurse. No-one on the team had been able to tell her how bad it was. He'd been wearing the stealth suit, and it'd been a messy fight, no-one could be sure what was blood, and how much of it was his, or even exactly what had happened.

All she knew was the he wasn't conscious.

"I should reassure you," says Sam. His voice is dull, and he's staring down at his scraped up hands, weariness etched into the slump of his shoulders. The scrapes are clean, but he hasn't bothered to bandage them.

"Don't," says Toni, and then she pauses. "Did you do this? Did Riley make it that far?"

"You gotta recognize that I'm only telling you this because I think it'll help keep our minds off Steve," he says. "Don't. Don't bring it up outside, I can't—I'll bring it up. If I need to."

Toni throws herself down in the chair opposite him. "I got it. Kinda the poster child for repression over here. Stark family tradition."

"Riley didn't make it to a hospital," Sam says bluntly. "They hit him with this big, nasty—some sort of modified, MacGyver shit kind of rifle—while he was in a spiral. Tore through one wing, caught him in the chest, ripped a hole through him. I saw the whole thing. I was too far away, too slow, and I swear, it was like a cartoon. He just hung there in the air for a second. The wing was sparking up, I could see the blood soaking the Kevlar suit, 'cause I was headed right towards him, and then he fell, and fell, and I had to finish the mission."

"You finished the mission?"

Sam looks miserable. "Yeah. Autopilot. Just an instinct kicking in, training taking over, I barely remember it. They told me I did it all perfectly, stopped the bad guys down to the last man, uncovered information they needed, took the whole armory out by myself. I don't remember it. Compartmentalizing, situation-specific psychogenic amnesia, adrenaline response, berserker, whatever you want to call it, I remember watching him fall and then I remember landing back at base." He pauses. When he inhales, it's shaky, but the exhale is smooth and he continues: "I asked to see him. I knew he was dead, the fall would've killed him even if the projectile hadn't, but I kept asking for him."

"Did they let you?"

"No. Next of kin only. Don't Ask, Don't Tell was still in place, so I couldn't even – they wouldn't let me see any of it, all the records and shit you get to see if you're married. Lived together six goddamn years and they wouldn't let me see him. We cremated him there. I got discharge paperwork and his mother got his ashes."

Toni sighs and stretches her legs out in front of her, tipping her head back to study the water-stained ceiling tiles. She knows the words to this little song-and-dance. "Let me guess. They weren't close."

"He joined the Army because she kicked him out when he told her he was gay. Hadn't spoken since." A smile crosses his face. "Emory stole the ashes. Replaced them with coffee grounds."

"Ashes look nothing like coffee grounds," says Toni.

"It's not like his mother checked. Just had to shift around right."

"I like this Emory," she says. Then, "I don't know how I can be a mother if Steve's not there with me."

It's too raw and honest and Toni desperately wants to cover it up with a quip the moment it trips off her tongue, but Sam speaks first. "You survive," says Sam. "You keep going. Like Steve would want you too. And if you want to give up the baby, then we'll find it the best damn foster family in the world. And if you want to keep it even without Steve, then _we'll_ be the best damn family in the world."

"I'm too much like my father to raise a kid. A chip off the old block."

The only thing going for the avocado-sized bugger is the Rogers genetics, Toni knows, and it's going to need more than that to avoid being just another Stark. _Volatile, self-obsessed, doesn't play well with others._

Sam stands. "Stark," he says.

Toni squints at one of the water stains. It almost looks like Australia, a kidney bean, or…

"Steve Rogers is my best friend. He's a good leader, a smart dude, kind, loyal, brave—and a damn good judge of character. He not only chose to sleep with you, he chose to sleep exclusively with you, he decided to have a baby with you, even if it wasn't planned, and he hasn't called in any of the numerous favors Natasha owes him to try to get custody of the kid, he _wants_ you to be the mother of his kid. He trusts you."

"Yeah, well, Steve's a fucking idiot," says Toni.

Sam pulls her to her feet and tucks her under his chin. "He is," agrees Sam, "a fucking idiot. But you'd be even more of a fucking idiot if you think that the parts of this kid that come from Steve are nothing but redeeming qualities for the parts that come from you."

She ends up crying into his shoulder and soaking his shirt, and doesn’t move until the nurse comes back, at which point she jumps away and pretends like she'd been the one comforting Sam, and the nurse spares a moment to look entire unimpressed before she announces that Steve isn't dead, just a goddamn idiot who lost a lot of blood from a superficial wound and needed a transfusion and stitches.

Sam, who's maybe also crying, agrees that there is no need to speak of this, ever. Toni decides right then that Steve has great taste in best friends.

-

The entire team comes along the first time Toni and Steve have a chance to find out the sex of the baby, even though Clint observes that it's fucking weird to have this much excitement surrounding discovering the shape of a fetus' genitalia and Steve is fretting about imposing gender roles with their nursery decorations and the influence finding out might have on the long-term psyche of the child and Thor points out, again, that if they'd just gone to Asgard _fifteen weeks ago_ , they would already know.

Pepper is in Milan dealing with something with a supplier, and the Wonder Twins show up late because SHIELD business, and for some reason they bring Agent Coulson and Agent Terrifying and she has to see Rhodey and Agent Terrifying in the same room, which is somehow just as bad as if they'd done full-on slobbering PDA.

Bruce spends the entire time grumbling that he's not actually an OBGYN, but he seems pretty handy with an ultrasound wand for all that.

"It's a boy," says Clint.

"It's not a boy," says Natasha.

"It's a girl," Bruce says.

"No it's fucking not, check again," orders Clint.

Thor, meanwhile, bellows, "A girl!"

He then grabs Agent Coulson in a hug that looks slightly painful, and Agent Terrifying rolls her eyes at Rhodey while he does a victory lap because he's gonna have a niece, while Pepper cheers and claps over Skype, but looks slightly distracted, which means she's totally already in the next window buying the child cute clothes.

"It's gotta be a fuckin' boy," says Clint. "Just, like, rotate the wand thingy a little more."

Bruce rolls his eyes. "Clint, this is a state of the art system turning ultrasound readings into a working 3D hologram of the fetus, not a Magic 8 Ball, I can't just shake it and make it say what you need to win the bet."

"Yes, please do not shake the fetus," Sam says. "Are we sure Clint should be allowed babysitting duty?"

Natasha holds out a hand. "Pay up, loser," she tells Clint.

"I don't have five dollars," he whines, patting down his jeans and t-shirt as if to double-check anyway.

" _Definitely_ no babysitting duty," says Sam.

Toni looks at Steve. "A daughter," she says quietly.

He smiles back at her and squeezes her hand. "I hope she takes after her mother," he says.

-

It's not the first time someone's blitzed the Tower since Toni got pregnant, but it is the first time someone actually got past the security bots and the Avengers and Jarvis; i.e., the first time one of their many, many enemies has seen her and known the truth.

He's from AIM, she thinks. The attack was too organized, too well-planned to be any sort of loose coalition of bad guys, this is military precision – not actually military, since they're actually, you know, _effective_ (she'll stop making jokes about the military when Rhodey stops making hilarious faces in reaction to them and not a second before) – and he definitely isn't from Doom or Magneto's lot, since he's human and calm and doesn't blather on about his lord and master Dr. Doom, or mutant superiority, or the fucking ocean ( _fuck_ Namor, the side-hopping bastard).

But he looks surprised enough that Toni knows there hasn't been a leak. If she can stop him, this won't go any further. They'll be safe again.

Except—

No matter what dark, dank hole SHIELD throws him into, no prison will contain the rumors. Toni knows rumors. She knows it'll take at least a little while to gain traction, but once it does, it's not like she can disprove it – she's visibly, heavily pregnant. The media will seize on it. The team will be in danger, the baby will be in danger, and she can't lose any of them.

None of this would give her pause if he were still pointing a gun at her, she's killed people in self defence before, dozens of times, but even while she's trying to figure out who the hell sent him she's gaining the upper hand in the fight. Thirty weeks pregnant or not, she was fucking Iron Woman.

He's pinned to the ground about fifteen seconds later, unarmed and badly bruised from a repulsor blast, her boot on his collarbone.

"It's not you in the suit anymore," he says, grinning with red-stained teeth. "You wouldn't trust SHIELD with that, and it's not your pretty little secretary… It must be the toy soldier."

 _Rhodey_ , thinks Toni, her blood suddenly ice cold in her veins. She's painted a target on Rhodey's back.

It probably makes her a bad person to be willing to kill an unarmed man to protect Rhodey. Logically, morally, cognitively, she knows this. But every cell in her body is suddenly burning with rage, and—

There's a gunshot.

Agent Terrifying strides across the room without care for the rubble and kneels down to check the would-be killer's pulse. Her face is entirely expressionless. "He'll wake up," she says, "eventually."

Toni exhales. Inhales. On the next exhale, she sighs, half-relief, half-weariness, and lets the repulsor power down so she can detach the gauntlet; between the fight and the moral conundrum occupying her racing thoughts, she's exhausted. "How eventually?"

"We can probably keep him under for the next fifteen weeks without too much damage," says the other woman. Her lips twitch. "He won't be running marathons any time soon after an induced coma that long, but then, he's going to be in a cell for the rest of his natural life."

"What is that gun?" Toni asks, making a grabby-hand gesture towards the shiny piece of unfamiliar tech.

"FitzSimmons designed it. They're calling it the Night-Night Gun."

"That's a terrible name."

"You have a robot named U."

Toni has to concede that point to Agent Terrifying. But. "Who names their kid 'Agent' when their last name is already 'Terrifying'?" She asks.

"I've been having sex with your best friend for six months," comes May's cool response, "you can probably call me May at this point."

"That would require thinking about you and Rhodey, and I refuse to think of that, that is a horrifying mental image that I _can't stop picturing oh my god_."

Steve and the others dismantle the small army in record time, and they watch the news footage of the Hulk bending guns in half and then hitting people across the face with them when they try to approach over and over, partially because it is the single coolest thing, and partially because you can hear Thor yelling, "AND LET THE WRATH OF THE HULK BE A LESSON TO THOSE WHO WOULD CAUSE HARM TO MY SHIELD BROTHERS AND SISTERS," and the way the guy holding the camera squeaks in fright at the noise.

-

Augusta Margaret Stark-Rogers, firstborn child of Iron Woman and Captain America, is born in the middle of an alien invasion.

Clint, who managed to break his arm jumping off of a collapsing building, sits with Pepper in the hospital room and lets Toni squeeze his hand and bitch at him for whining about how she's gonna break his other hand. It takes some convincing – namely Toni screaming at them – but the doctor and nurses let them have the room all rigged up with Jarvis running camera feeds various screens and their earpieces in.

Pepper has the nerve to call them workaholics while she's writing a strongly worded statement to a nosy reporter who wants to know why Toni hasn't made a public appearance in a while. Clint ignores her. Toni does too, but that's also partially because contractions hurt like a bitch, holy shit, and she thought torture was bad. (She can totally hear Pepper saying _too soon_ , so she doesn't actually voice it.) Steve's barking orders, his voice terse, like he's taking it personally that they invaded today of all days. The Hulk seems especially gleeful about smashing, too.

Steve Rogers misses the birth of his daughter, but the first thing her tiny infant ears hear is her father's voice as he commands the world's greatest heroes in battle. Frankly, Toni will take it. Especially since the tiny, wrinkly little person screams quite a lot and according to the five billion books Steve has read about babies, that's a sign of good lungs.

"She's beautiful," Pepper says tearfully, holding Toni's other hand now that there's less risk of broken bones.

"Of course she is," says Toni. "Have you _seen_ her dad?"

Somehow, the first picture of Toni holding her goddamn child is one taken by Clint, who then captions it with "Baby's First Alien Invasion!!!" and sends it to every superhero in his contact list.

**Author's Note:**

> Also, I dropped three major hints for the future in this fic so uh. Brownie points if you spot 'em.


End file.
